The Educator's Notebook

featured articles

On Intellectual Humility, Really Listening, And Fighting Polarization (Cf. Discussion)
Psychology Today - 7/5/23

“The contemporary cultural machinery is geared to chase folks out of the middle ground or push experts in one area out of their lane, leading them to confidently pronounce on matters they have no business banging on about. Call it cognitive narcissism. Curious, collaborative inquiry has been abandoned for the brute force of unilateral persuasion. Intellectual humility, instead, courts the kind of nuance that’s often found in the middle ground.”
That Harvard Study: Positive Relationships And Success In Life
CNBC - 2/10/23

“Contrary to what you might think, it’s not career achievement, money, exercise, or a healthy diet. The most consistent finding we’ve learned through 85 years of study is: Positive relationships keep us happier, healthier, and help us live longer. Period.”
How We Debate: Highly Successful People Argue Differently
CNBC - 1/19/23

“Instead of trying to “win” every argument you find yourself in, you could have more success if you look at arguments as opportunities to learn and grow… The setup was simple: Participants had to debate hot-button topics in an online chatroom. One group was instructed to adopt a competitive mentality in order to “win” the argument, while the other group was told to “argue to learn.” An “arguing to learn” mentality rests in viewing contentious conversations as collaborative exchanges that can deepen your understanding of a given topic, rather than battles to be won.”
Respect For Place: Japan Cleans Up After Itself In The World Cup
New York Times - 11/27/22

““It’s a sign of respect for a place,” said Eiji Hattori, 32, a fan from Tokyo, who had a bag of bottles, ticket stubs and other stadium detritus. “This place is not ours, so we should clean up if we use it. And even if it is not our garbage, it’s still dirty, so we should clean it up.””
Does Teaching Better Question-Asking Help Foster Curiosity?
Harvard - 11/1/22

“I was expecting children in the question training to ask a lot more questions in the follow-up task and was hoping they might show some improvement of knowledge and some improvement of generalized curiosity/interest in science content as measured by the “willingness-to-pay” task. We did not see strong evidence that the question asking training taught children to simply ask more questions: Children in the question-asking condition did not ask more questions about a novel animal than children in the listening condition. However, we found a whopping effect on “willingness-to-pay.” Children in the question-asking training were willing to pay many more stickers for new science content than children in the careful listening condition. We also found that children in the question-asking condition gained marginally more science knowledge than the careful listeners. Furthermore, practice with question-asking was more beneficial for children with lower baseline knowledge, suggesting that question-asking shows promise for enhancing children’s motivation to learn and equalizing academic disparities.”

View remaining articles (59)

“Did The Pandemic Change Your Personality? Possibly.”
New York Times - 10/22/22

“For more than two years, Covid disrupted social rituals and rites of passage. Now a recent study suggests we have become less extroverted, creative, agreeable and conscientious. The declines in some traits were sharper among young people.”
Random Acts Of Kindness Have Outsized (Large) Effects
New York Times - 9/2/22

“The notion that kindness can boost well-being is hardly new. Studies have shown that prosocial behavior — basically, voluntarily helping others — can help lower people’s daily stress levels, and that simple acts of connection, like texting a friend, mean more than many of us realize. But researchers who study kindness and friendship say they hope the new findings strengthen the scientific case for making these types of gestures more often.”
Failure Is Learning: Eminent Education Leader Shares Resume Of Failures
Larry Cuban - 11/18/21

“Why note failures? Because successes in life, however defined, are built on failures that often go unnoted. The common pattern in talking or writing about a career is to deny or cover up failures. Carefully prepared resumes are silent on mishaps. The point is that everyone’s career is marked by failures but in our competitive, highly individualistic culture, talking about failure is like talking about body odor. Not done. Failure means you are a loser in a society that praises winners. So here I want to recount my career failures to make clear that chasing success in one’s life is anchored in confronting repeated failures.”
GPA Correlates With Where Students Put Their Phones While Studying
Character Lab - 10/1/21

“The trick I like best is also the one most commonly recommended by undergraduates in the classes I’m teaching this year—what scientists call situation modification. It involves intentionally changing your physical surroundings to make it easier to resist temptation. Consider, for example, this data collected from thousands of high school students on Character Lab Research Network. The farther students reported keeping their phones when trying to study, the higher their report card grades.”
“To Build Emotional Strength [Resilience], Expand Your Brain”
New York Times - 9/2/20

“The theory: To deal effectively with change, it helps to be engaged in changing yourself.”
“Study: Boosting Soft Skills Is Better Than Raising Test Scores”
Hechinger Report - 3/2/20

“The researchers compared siblings who attended different high schools, and the ones who attended schools that were better at boosting soft skills had better outcomes.”
7 Steps Adults Can Take To Discourage Bullying
SmartBrief - 1/8/20

“Parents and educational staff need different tactics to address -- and end -- bullying. Many of the suggestions that are provided here are what clinicians encourage clients toward during the course of therapy. While therapeutic intervention often only involves a single person, or a handful of individuals, the school environment provides the opportunity to affect positive change on a broad scale.”
How Collaboration Leads To Persistence In Students
KQED - 9/23/19

“In the workshops students worked on math problems together, considering together what it would take to achieve at the highest levels on different problems. The academic improvement that resulted from the workshops was significant. Within two years, the failure rate of African American students had dropped to zero, and the African American and Latino students who attended the workshops were outperforming their white and Asian classmates.”
Your Mindset About Stress Matters, And Can Change Your Health
NPR - 8/2/19

“Can changing how you think about stress make you healthier? And here, the science says yes. When you change your mind about stress, you can change your body's response to stress. Your heart might be pounding. You might be breathing faster, maybe breaking out into a sweat. And normally, we interpret these physical changes as anxiety or signs that we aren't coping very well with the pressure… Participants who learned to view the stress response as helpful for their performance - well, they were less stressed out, less anxious, more confident. But the most fascinating finding to me was how their physical stress response changed.”
Solvitur Ambulando: It Is Solved By Walking.
Quartz - 5/25/19

“Walking is a way to be more present, ease anxiety, spark creativity, increase productivity, and detox from digital overload (that is, if you don’t walk with your face in your phone).”
“Why Generalists Triumph In A Specialized World”
New York Times - 5/24/19

“This pattern extends beyond music and sports. Students who have to specialize earlier in their education — picking a pre-med or law track while still in high school — have higher earnings than their generalist peers at first, according to one economist’s research in several countries. But the later-specializing peers soon caught up… The early specializers, meanwhile, more often quit their career tracks.”
Is Teaching Growth Mindsets Effective? A Lengthy Exploration.
Aeon - 3/11/19

“Recent evidence would suggest that growth mindset interventions are not the elixir of student learning that many of its proponents claim it to be… It is hard to dispute that having a self-belief in their own capacity for change is a positive attribute for students. Paradoxically, however, that aspiration is not well served by direct interventions that try to instil it. Yet creating a culture in which students can believe in the possibility of improving their intelligence through their own purposeful effort is something few would disagree with. Perhaps growth mindset works best as a philosophy and not an intervention.”
“I Moved A Drone With My Mind. Soon Your Students Will Too.”
Brookings - 3/8/19

"Take a deep breath and try again,” said the young man, encouraging me in true Yoda fashion. “UP, UP, UP,” I thought, fixing my mind on the drove. And, amazingly, up it went. Hovering here and there and lurching around a bit, but most certainly skyward. After 30 seconds of amazing drone control, I’d had enough. I stopped repeating “up” but the drone kept flying. “Close your eyes” said the young man. I did and the drone immediately fell to the table. Afterward, one thing struck me. The future belongs not just to those who can write algorithms but to those who can control their thoughts.”
Relationships: Doctors’ Kindness Drives Health Outcomes. Surely, Teachers, Too
New York Times - 1/22/19

“All of this research suggests that doctors who don’t connect with their patients may risk undermining a treatment’s success. Doctor-patient rapport is not just a fluffy, feel-good bonus that boosts Yelp reviews, but a component of medical care that has important effects on a patient’s physical health. Particularly as artificial intelligence promises a world where we don’t need to go to the doctor for minor questions, we should not overlook the value of interacting with a human doctor and hearing words of encouragement.”
David Brooks: Relationships Are Essential For Learning
New York Times - 1/17/19

“Students have got to have a good relationship with teachers. Suzanne Dikker of New York University has shown that when classes are going well, the student brain activity synchronizes with the teacher’s brain activity. In good times and bad, good teachers and good students co-regulate each other. The bottom line is this, a defining question for any school or company is: What is the quality of the emotional relationships here?”
“The Business Case For Curiosity”
Harvard Business Review - 9/1/18

“By making small changes to the design of their organizations and the ways they manage their employees, leaders can encourage curiosity—and improve their companies. This is true in every industry and for creative and routine work alike.”
Turkle: Presence Matters. Machines Cannot Provide Artificial Intimacy.
New York Times - 8/11/18

“Years ago I spoke with a 16-year-old girl who was considering the idea of having a computer companion in the future, and she described the upside to me. It’s not that the robot she’d imagined, a vastly more sophisticated Siri, was so inspiring. It’s that she’d already found people to be so disappointing. And now, for the first time, she explained me, people have options. Back then I thought her comments seemed prescient. Now I find them timely.”
Gratitude: Thank You Letters Have A Much More Profound Effect Than Thought
British Psychological Society - 7/18/18

“The senders of the thank-you letters consistently underestimated how positive the recipients felt about receiving the letters and how surprised they were by the content. The senders also overestimated how awkward the recipients felt; and they underestimated how warm, and especially how competent, the recipients perceived them to be.”
3-Step Process For Learning From Failure (Via Google)
Inc. - 5/14/18

“Our next step is to work together to create a written record for what happened, why, its impact, how the issue was mitigated or resolved, and what we'll do to prevent the incident from recurring.”
Why Is Failure An Effective Learning Tool?
Atlantic - 4/25/18

“Research on failure as a motivator is limited, though the evidence that does exist suggests that students can grow both from learning about the failures of other successful people and from experiencing failure themselves. Crucially, for failure to “work,” research indicates that educators and parents need to encourage students to figure out what went wrong and try to improve.”
On The Value Of Difficulty, The Danger Of Convenience
New York Times - 2/16/18

"Today’s cult of convenience fails to acknowledge that difficulty is a constitutive feature of human experience. Convenience is all destination and no journey. But climbing a mountain is different from taking the tram to the top, even if you end up at the same place… We need to consciously embrace the inconvenient — not always, but more of the time. Nowadays individuality has come to reside in making at least some inconvenient choices.”
On The Value of Conflict: 4 Rules for Productive Disagreement.
New York Times - 11/4/17

"If no one ever argues, you’re not likely to give up on old ways of doing things, let alone try new ones. Disagreement is the antidote to groupthink. We’re at our most imaginative when we’re out of sync. There’s no better time than childhood to learn how to dish it out — and to take it.”
"Maybe We All Need a Little Less Balance”
New York Times - 8/22/17

"Ever since I can remember, I’ve been told to strive for balance. Yet I’ve noticed something interesting: The times in my life during which I’ve felt happiest and most alive are also the times that I’ve been the most unbalanced… I think far better than striving for balance is striving for what psychologists call internal self-awareness, or the ability to see yourself clearly by assessing, monitoring and proactively managing your core values, emotions, passions, behaviors and impact on others.”
Really Extraordinary: A Game Theory Simulation Of Trust
Nicky Case - 7/26/17

“It was Christmas 1914 on the Western Front. Despite strict orders not to chillax with the enemy, British and German soldiers left their trenches, crossed No Man's Land, and gathered to bury their dead, exchange gifts, and play games. Meanwhile: it's 2017, the West has been at peace for decades, and wow, we suck at trust... Why, even in peacetime, do friends become enemies? And why, even in wartime, do enemies become friends?"
The Short History Of The Concept Of “Empathy”
Zocalo Public Square - 7/17/17

"The feeling we call “empathy” has shifted dramatically over the last century from a description of an aesthetic response, to a moral and political aspiration, to a clinical skill, and today, to the firing of neurons. Returning to empathy’s roots—to once again think about the potential for “in-feeling” with a work of art, a mountain, or a tree—invites us to re-imagine our connection to nature and the world around us.”
A New Look At Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills
Harold Jarche - 6/29/17

"I would now suggest that hard skills are really temporary skills. They come and go according to the economy and the state of technology. Today, we need very few people who know how to shoe a horse. Soft skills are permanent ones.”
Susan Cain Writes About The Need For Followers, Not Leaders
New York Times - 3/24/17

"My sons are avid soccer players, so I spend a lot of time watching the “beautiful game.” The thing that makes it beautiful is not leadership, though an excellent coach is essential. Nor is it the swoosh of the ball in the goal, though winning is noisily celebrated. It is instead the intricate ballet of patterns and passes, of each player anticipating the other’s strengths and needs, each shining for the brief instant that he has the ball before passing it to a teammate or losing it to an opponent.”
“Against Empathy”: A Case For Rational Compassion
New York Times - 12/6/16

"It turns out that Mr. Bloom’s view is far more nuanced than the provocative declaration above… And he is by no means making the case for heartlessness. His point, rather, is that empathy is untempered by reason, emanating from the murky bayou of the gut. He prefers a kind of rational compassion — a mixture of caring and detached cost-benefit analysis. His book is a systematic attempt to show why this is so.”
Discipline And Grit… Soul Crushing Or Ultimately Redemptive?
Washington Post - 12/2/16

"The technical mastery I’d achieved during my studies had stripped away much of my expressivity, and I was no longer convinced that I had anything worthwhile to say. Without the belief that I was of use to the world or that my voice mattered uniquely, I lost my ambition. I became disillusioned and resentful of my apparent disposability… But as we began to play, I felt something shift inside me. Suddenly, the months of estrangement and resentment and sadness and confusion, and the uncertainty about my future as a violinist, became part of a new story.”
Starting To Realize The Promise of Automated, Personalized (Math) Tutoring
Jo Boaler - 11/29/16

"Importantly, they are designing a digital environment that mimics something a teacher can do in a classroom yet many tech products fail to do – provide personalized coaching. For students who seem to display low confidence, they encourage them by showing them their past successes. For students who seem to have low self-regulation (e.g. they jumped around and gave up often), they encourage them to reflect and reconsider before they quit a level… For students who seem to display low effort, they appeal to altruistic motivation by changing language from “show what you can do; try your best” to “help us improve our software by trying your best.”
What Do People With Strong Willpower and Self-Control Do?
Vox - 11/24/16

"The students who exerted more self-control were not more successful in accomplishing their goals. It was the students who experienced fewer temptations overall who were more successful when the researchers checked back in at the end of the semester. What’s more, the people who exercised more effortful self-control also reported feeling more depleted. So not only were they not meeting their goals, they were also exhausted from trying.”
Maybe We’ve Gotten Willpower Wrong; Maybe It Doesn’t Deplete
Harvard Business Review - 11/23/16

"Dweck concluded that signs of ego depletion were observed only in test subjects who believed willpower was a limited resource. Those participants who did not see willpower as finite did not show signs of ego depletion… Michael Inzlicht… principal investigator at the Toronto Laboratory for Social Neuroscience, believes willpower is not a finite resource but instead acts like an emotion. Just as we don’t “run out” of joy or anger, willpower ebbs and flows based on what’s happening to us and how we feel. Viewing willpower through this lens has profound implications.”
Against Irony: An Excellent Video Essay On Sincerity And Optimism
Will Schoder - 10/6/16

“Postmodern thought, with its deconstruction of everything and its emphasis on individual interpretation, leads us down a road of narcissism, cynicism, and detachment. To fix it… to feel less lonely, it’s perhaps this non-ideological pursuit of getting along, of striving to have strong communal integrity, of valuing others for their human dignity, unabashedly enjoying the things we find to be awesome. And as David Foster Wallace would say: making it okay to be unavoidably sentimental and naive and goo-prone and generally pathetic. That might help us find a greater sense of meaning and optimism in our lives.”
“Resilience Is About How You Recharge, Not How You Endure”
Harvard Business Review - 6/24/16

"We often take a militaristic, “tough” approach to resilience and grit… We believe that longer we tough it out, the tougher we are, and therefore the more successful we will be. However, this entire conception is scientifically inaccurate. The very lack of a recovery period is dramatically holding back our collective ability to be resilient and successful. Research has found that there is a direct correlation between lack of recovery and increased incidence of health and safety problems.”
Paul Tough: Ok, Resilience Is Important… Here’s How You Teach It
Atlantic - 6/1/16

"For all our talk about noncognitive skills, nobody has yet found a reliable way to teach kids to be grittier or more resilient. And it has become clear, at the same time, that the educators who are best able to engender noncognitive abilities in their students often do so without really “teaching” these capacities the way one might teach math or reading—indeed, they often do so without ever saying a word about them in the classroom. This paradox has raised a pressing question for a new generation of researchers: Is the teaching paradigm the right one to use when it comes to helping young people develop noncognitive capacities?”
A Wonderful, Long Read On Patience As Resilience (via Afghanistan)
Aeon - 5/12/16

"Patience recognises suffering in the difficulties of one’s life and that of another. Nowadays, it might conjure up ideas of complacence but, with a long view of time – in which time is understood as abundant – patience becomes a way of bearing sorrows. Unlike resilience, which implies returning to an original shape, patience suggests change and allows the possibility of transformation as a means of overcoming difficulties. It is a simultaneous act of defiance and tenderness, a complex existence that gently breaks barriers. In patience, a person exists at the edge of becoming.”
Brooks: More Important Than Grit Is Intrinsic Motivation
New York Times - 5/10/16

"I don’t know about you, but I’m really bad at being self-disciplined about things I don’t care about. For me, and I suspect for many, hard work and resilience can only happen when there is a strong desire. Grit is thus downstream from longing. People need a powerful why if they are going to be able to endure any how.”
Where Resilience Comes From: Positive Framing & Locus Of Control
New Yorker - 2/11/16

“From a young age, resilient children tended to “meet the world on their own terms.” They were autonomous and independent, would seek out new experiences, and had a “positive social orientation.” “Though not especially gifted, these children used whatever skills they had effectively,” Werner wrote. Perhaps most importantly, the resilient children had what psychologists call an “internal locus of control”: they believed that they, and not their circumstances, affected their achievements. The resilient children saw themselves as the orchestrators of their own fates. In fact, on a scale that measured locus of control, they scored more than two standard deviations away from the standardization group.”
Does Carol Dweck Think We’re Overdoing Growth Mindset Praise?
Quartz - 1/12/16

"Effort itself has become praise-worthy without the goal it was meant to unleash: learning. Parents tell her that they have a growth mindset, but then they react with anxiety or false affect to a child’s struggle or setback. “They need a learning reaction – ‘what did you do?’, ‘what can we do next?’” Dweck says.”
Doing Character Right: David Brooks Profiles A School
New York Times - 11/27/15

"All over the country there are schools and organizations trying to come up with new ways to cultivate character. The ones I’ve seen that do it best, so far, are those that cultivate intense, thick community. Most of the time character is not an individual accomplishment. It emerges through joined hearts and souls, and in groups.”
Four Learning Goals: Knowledge, Skills, Character, Meta-Learning
Center for Curriculum Redesign - 10/29/15

“The foundational reason for why we find it so difficult to rebuild school curricula around the needs of the modern world is that we lack an organizing framework that can help prioritise educational competencies, and systematically structure the conversation around what individuals should learn at various stages of their development. Four-dimensional education provides a clear and actionable first-of-its-kind organizing framework of competencies needed for this century.”
Why Inmates Upset Harvard In Debate: Preparation and Persistence
Washington Post - 10/7/15

"If debate is equal parts rhetorical flourish and strategy, it’s worth asking whether circumstance forced the prisoners to devise an approach — in which limited resources demanded sharper focus and more rigorous planning — that resulted in superior lines of argumentation.”
The Importance Of Athletics For Building Character
KQED - 7/1/15

"In a recent study that’s not yet published, Driska and his colleagues looked at an intense two-week wrestling camp, measuring feelings and attitudes of 89 teens before the camp experience and after. As expected, the players’ confidence increased — it was a tough camp to get through, Driska says. But what surprised him, he says, was how much feelings of hopefulness among the young people also increased.”
Stress Can Be A Good Thing. It’s About Mindset.
Stanford - 5/7/15

"Stress is most likely to be harmful when the following conditions are present: it feels against your will, out of your control and utterly devoid of meaning. If you can change any of these conditions – by finding some meaning in it – you can reduce the harmful effects of stress.”
What is Resilience? How Do We Build It?
Harvard Graduate School of Education - 3/23/15

"As a growing body of research is showing, the developing brain relies upon the consistent ‘serve and return’ interactions that happen between a young child and a primary caregiver… When these interactions occur regularly, they provide the scaffolding that helps build ‘key capacities — such as the ability to plan, monitor, and regulate behavior, and adapt to changing circumstances — that enable children to respond to adversity and to thrive.’”
Can You Overcome Fear Of Failure By Pursuing Rejection?
NPR - 1/16/15

"Jason kept on seeking out rejection. And as he did, he found that people were actually more receptive to him, and he was more receptive to people, too. ‘I was able to approach people, because what are you gonna do, reject me? Great!’"
Defining Open-Mindedness: Preparing Ourselves To Be Surprised
Slate - 1/2/15

“Researchers have demonstrated that our perception of a speaker depends on whether we’ve been told ahead of time that he’s confident or shy. Our judgment of a child’s academic skill depends on whether we’ve been led to believe that she’s from a rich family or a poor one. When we serve on a jury, we quickly form an impression about whether the defendant is guilty, and then disproportionately interpret new evidence as supporting that impression. In other words, we need to actively look for signs that our assumptions are wrong, because we won’t do so unprompted. One such sign, scientists have suggested, is the feeling of surprise.”
How Science Is Made: Curiosity, Wonder, Ignorance, and Serendipity
New York Review of Books - 10/23/14

“How could the public be better educated about the nature of scientific inquiry? Three recent books... lay bare the provisionality of science and may, paradoxically, actually help us find a way to address rampant denialism. Rather than focus single-mindedly on the technical aspects of science or the need to improve basic skills, they focus our attention on the psychology of science—the drives that inspire us to inquire into nature, and the limits that our minds necessarily impose on our knowledge.”
$10K for Teachers to Experiment with Teaching Character
Character Lab - 10/17/14

“7 teachers will receive a $10,000 stipend, support from Character Lab, and additional funding to test their ideas for cultivating character strengths and skills in schools. Application deadline is November 2nd.”
The Way To Teach Self-Control (Grit) Is Through Emotions
Pacific Standard - 9/15/14

“Cultivate the right emotions, the prosocial ones, in daily life. These emotions— gratitude, compassion, authentic pride, and even guilt—work from the bottom up, without requiring cognitive effort on our part, to shape decisions that favor the long-term.”
What Character Is, and How to Teach It. Duckworth Aggregates It All.
Character Lab - 9/1/14

“Character is a person’s disposition to think, feel, and act in ways that help oneself and others... Research tells us that we can develop and practice these skills [curiosity, gratitude, grit, optimism, self-control, social intelligence, zest], just like we can with traditional subjects.”
The Student-Athlete, Seen Through Plato and Homer
New York Times - 8/15/14

“The training of the body is directly related to the development of a fundamental aspect of the human psyche: what Plato, that pre-eminent teacher of teaching, called thymos. In English we don’t have a word for this concept, but it encompasses both bravery and the urge for glory. Perhaps the closest we have is “spiritedness,” as in “a spirited competitor.” Plato knew that thymos is a marvelous quality that needs to be developed and strengthened, especially in those who represent the community as soldiers."
Alfie Kohn Pushes Back Against the New Culture of Failure
New York Times - 5/3/14

“No one ever explains the mechanism by which the silence of a long drive home without a trophy is supposed to teach resilience. Nor are we told whether there’s any support for this theory of inoculation by immersion [without assistance from 'overprotective' adults].”
Struggling Is Better For Learning Than Scaffolded Understanding
Brilliant Blog - 2/24/14

“Kapur has identified three conditions that promote a beneficial struggle. First, choose problems to work on that ‘challenge but do not frustrate.’ Second, provide learners with opportunities to explain and elaborate on what they’re doing. Third, give learners the chance to compare and contrast good and bad solutions.”
How To Teach Resilience
Brilliant Blog - 2/10/14

“Lastly, the drill sergeants in Seligman’s program are taught two capacities that might seem at odds with mental toughness: gratitude and generosity.”
Slowing Down: Teaching Patience as a Strategy
Harvard Magazine - 11/30/13

“Now that, generally, one need not wait for things, patience becomes an active and positive cognitive state.”
Surprise: Stress Is Healthy For You. It’s All In How You See It.
TED / YouTube - 9/13/13

“How you think and how you act can transform your experience of stress. Chasing meaning is better for your health than avoiding discomfort.”
“Life Stress Impairs Self-Control In Early Adolescence”
Frontiers In Psychology - 1/11/13

“In three prospective, longitudinal studies, negative life events reported by the mother (in Study 1) or child (in Studies 2 and 3) predicted rank-order decreases in self-control over time.”
Lit Review: The Effects Of Values And Self-Affirmations On Performance
Social And Personality Psychology Compass - 1/1/13

“The purpose of the present review is to (i) summarize self-affirmation theory; (ii) review major new discoveries in affirmation research with an emphasis on how affirmations affect defensiveness, stress, and academic performance under identity threat; and (iii) present a general theoretical account of how these effects occur.”

character

On The Challenges Of Chasing Happiness
Psyche - 11/20/23
“Is Curiosity Helping Or Hurting Your Work?”
Harvard Business Review - 11/14/23
Brief Notes On Curiosity From Angela Duckworth
Character Lab - 11/1/23
“4 Phrases That Build A Culture Of Curiosity”
Harvard Business Review - 11/1/23
Four Principles For Deliberate Optimism In The Classroom
Middle Web - 10/26/23

View remaining articles (527)

On Listening And Leadership
Professor Galloway - 10/20/23
A Reminder Of How To Fail Right
Character Lab - 9/17/23
Global Awareness Grows Of The Risks Of Loneliness
American Scholar - 9/5/23
“Stop Resisting Change” - And How To Accept It
New York Times - 8/30/23

“Allostasis is defined as “stability through change,” elegantly capturing the concept’s double meaning: The way to stay stable through the process of change is by changing, at least to some extent. If you want to hold your footing, you’ve got to keep moving.”
Saying “Hello!” To People Correlates With Greater Well Being
Gallup - 8/15/23
Does Research Support SEL Curricula? It’s Still Unclear.
Hechinger Report - 8/14/23

“An updated meta-analysis was published in July 2023 in the peer-reviewed journal Child Development. It was conducted by 14 researchers, the majority from Yale University, and it also found good results for SEL interventions in schools while simultaneously broadening the category of “social and emotional learning” to encompass even more non-academic skills. However, this latest research synthesis doesn’t really settle the debate over whether the evidence for SEL is strong or guide schools to which SEL interventions are most effective.”
“Studying The Limits Of Human Perfection, Through Darts”
New York Times - 8/5/23
A Failure Resume: And A Reminder That Failure Can Mean Growth
Larry Cuban - 7/24/23

“For me, however, closed doors did two things. In some instances, I doubled down and persisted—50 rejections in applying for superintendent posts—in other instances, it nudged me to open doors that I had not considered–going from the failed attempt to manage a governmental research group riven by racial animosities to administering the Office of Staff Development in the Washington, D.C. schools or getting rejected for a principalship and deciding to pursue a doctorate.”
John MacMurray On Reason And Emotion
Marginalian - 6/29/23
Gratitude: More And More Research Shows It’s Good For Your Health
New York Times - 6/8/23
“When Should You Let Your Kid Quit?”
KQED - 6/5/23

“One of the first obstacles is a reflexive negativity toward the idea of stopping something. Sloganeering about resilience and grit – “winners never quit and quitters never win,” for example – turn what should be rational decision making into a test of character. If we think of quitters as losers, we’ll err on the side of sticking with something that ought to be abandoned.”
Talking To Strangers Can Brighten Your Day - Even For Introverts
Character Lab - 2/26/23
“Excellencism” - An Alternative To Perfectionism
Annie Murphy Paul - 2/22/23
Stanford On Love: The Science, Sociology, Chemistry, And More
Stanford - 2/13/23
Movement As Conflict Resolution
Berkeley - 2/8/23
Sighing Is An Effective Stress Reduction Technique
Cell Reports - 1/10/23
“How A Bit Of Awe Can Improve Your Health”
New York Times - 1/3/23
Is “Willingness To Learn”The Key School Success?
New York Times - 1/3/23
“The 7-Day Happiness Challenge”
New York Times - 1/1/23
The Science Of Humor — And Insights On Humanity
Vox - 12/19/22
More Examinations Of Whether/How Growth Mindsets Work
KQED - 12/5/22
Experiences Shape You More Than Things
Character Lab - 11/27/22

“Research shows that we easily habituate to material possessions. In contrast, experiences don’t lose their luster. Scientists sometimes refer to this asymmetry as the experiential advantage.”
Freudenfreude, The Opposite Of Schadenfreude
New York Times - 11/25/22

“Finding pleasure in another person’s good fortune is what social scientists call “freudenfreude,” a term (inspired by the German word for “joy”) that describes the bliss we feel when someone else succeeds, even if it doesn’t directly involve us. Freudenfreude is like social glue, said Catherine Chambliss, a professor of psychology at Ursinus College. It makes relationships “more intimate and enjoyable.””
Five Rules From Improv To Help With Confidence (And Humor)
NPR - 11/19/22
On Nudging: From College Success Interventions
Brookings - 11/17/22

“While nudges can be effective strategies to change behavior, they are not appropriate for all policy goals. The following questions are essential for considering whether to deploy a nudge intervention:”
A Few Important Reminders About Gratitude
Character Lab - 11/13/22
On Hubris And Humility (Via The Tech Meltdown)
Professor Galloway - 11/11/22
Early Failure Can Lead To Later Success
THE Conversation - 11/8/22
“7 Practical Ways To Reduce Anxiety In Difficult Times”
SmartBrief - 11/7/22
On Normalizing (Professional) Failure
ASCD - 11/2/22
“Success Isn’t Linear” (A Dance)
YouTube - 11/1/22
Four Questions To Assess And Improve Trust
Harvard Business Review - 11/1/22
Four Ideas For Being More Disciplined
Nick Wignall - 10/9/22
Four Traits Apple Looks For When Hiring Employees
CNBC - 10/2/22
On The Relationship Between Resilience And Flexibility
NAIS - 9/13/22
On Growth Mindset Vs Intellectual Risk-Taking
Kappan - 8/29/22
On Building Student Intrinsic Motivation Through Autonomy, Mastery, And Purpose
Edutopia - 8/24/22
How To Pursue “Smart Failures”
Fast Company - 7/29/22
“How To Teach Yourself To Be More Confident”
Fast Company - 6/29/22
Apple's 12 Most Embarrassing Product Failures
Gizmodo - 6/27/22

“With all the praise Apple receives, it can be easy to forget about the company’s many failures, some of which never made it to market. Apple is now the richest tech company in the world, but its ascendance wasn’t without its setbacks, some of which put the company on the brink of bankruptcy. Some of these ill-fated devices were either poorly realized or overly ambitious—but nearly all of them influenced the devices Apple users enjoy today. And you might be surprised to learn about, or perhaps remember, some of the more recent failures.”
Waiting: An Opportunity For A Mental Palate Cleanser
The Art of Noticing - 6/27/22
How Video Games May Be Able To Teach Empathy
Washington Post - 6/25/22
Suggestions For Teaching Collaboration Skills
MIT Sloan Management Review - 6/23/22
Understanding The Four Types Of Regret
Middle Web - 6/23/22
“Are We Responsible For The Things We Do Wrong?”
Guardian - 6/20/22

“On the one hand, if we are solely responsible for the things we do wrong, some genuinely malevolent parties get off scot-free. On the other, if we locate responsibility entirely outside the individual, we relegate ourselves to sentient flotsam buffeted by currents beyond our control.”
On Ways To Learn From Failure
Fast Company - 6/19/22
More On How To Replace Negativity When Thinking
Fast Company - 5/21/22
We Aren’t Born Only For Conflict. There Are Other Human Stories.
New Yorker - 5/9/22

“Without quite knowing why, I’ve always disliked the truism that conflict is drama’s fundamental ingredient. Yes, we fight and cajole and coax and settle scores: that’s our species, and it’s frequently how we show ourselves onstage. But this bit of craft wisdom—conflict is king—is the handmaiden of a paranoid anthropology, and a limited way of thinking about action and speech. We humans do much more than struggle, will against will. And our talk isn’t strictly coefficient with our need to act upon or influence others for our own ends. Often, to the contrary, it springs from a mysterious overflow of unbidden feeling, more a free gift of sound and syntax—of humor, of love—than a blunt instrument of acquisition.”
On Kindness, Chores, Bullying, And Upstanding
KQED - 2/17/22
How To Learn After A Failure
Fast Company - 1/23/22
On Purpose: What Makes Life Meaningful? Views From 17 Advanced Economies
Pew Research - 11/18/21

“What do people value in life? How much of what gives people satisfaction in their lives is fundamental and shared across cultures, and how much is unique to a given society? To understand these and other issues, Pew Research Center posed an open-ended question about the meaning of life to nearly 19,000 adults across 17 advanced economies.”
On Patience
Austin Kleon - 11/3/21
Are Curiosity And Persistence The Skills/Traits That Matter Most?
EdWeek - 10/29/21
“You Aren’t Lazy. You Just Need To Slow Down.”
NPR - 9/24/21
On Music And Being A “Gifted Listener”
Brain Pickings - 9/17/21
Curiosity And The Absence Of Certainty, Awareness Of Ignorance
Austin Kleon - 8/3/21

“I believe that one of the greatest mistakes made by human beings is to want certainties when trying to understand something. The search for knowledge is not nourished by certainty: it is nourished by a radical absence of certainty. Thanks to the acute awareness of our ignorance, we are open to doubt and can continue to learn and to learn better. This has always been the strength of scientific thinking—thinking born of curiosity, revolt, change.”
Should Curiosity Be A Verb?
Austin Kleon - 8/3/21
On Wisdom. Against Persuasion.
Boston Review - 7/26/21
On The Importance Of Having Awe In Our Lives, Even For Small Things
New York Times - 7/5/21

“Researchers often describe awe as an emotion that combines an experience of vastness with both pleasure and a fear of the unknown. While many of us might consider these moments rare, ephemeral and tricky to reproduce, a few scientists are finding that this reverence is a skill that can be cultivated and has remarkable mental health benefits.”
More On The Benefits Of A Beginner’s Mindset
The Guardian - 7/1/21
Reflections On Joy, Awe, And Happiness
KQED - 6/30/21
We Learn Resilience Better From Success Stories Than Failure
Character Lab - 5/30/21
"Why You Don’t Learn From Failure”
Character Lab - 5/23/21

“When we fail, we tune out. To avoid feeling bad about ourselves, we stop paying attention. As a result, we don’t learn from the experience. We do learn when failure is less personal. In our research, participants who struggled to learn from their own failures were able to learn from the failures of others. It can be hard to focus on our own failings, but the mistakes, recoveries, and hard-won lessons of friends and colleagues? Those are some teachable moments. Don’t magnify mistakes… Do spotlight success.”
Brooks: On The Difference Between Wisdom And Knowledge
New York Times - 4/15/21
Questioning Grit As Predictor Of Success
Nautilus - 4/14/21
On Polymaths
Commentary - 4/1/21
“Some People Just Want To Watch The World Burn”
Royal Society Publishing - 2/22/21
The Fool: Another Example Of The Beginner’s Mind
Austin Kleon - 2/10/21
Taking Over For Children May Reduce Persistence
SRCD - 1/23/21
Admit Your Mistakes. It’s Better For Everyone
Character Lab - 1/17/21

“Copping to previous mistakes makes you come across as more knowledgeable because others assume that you have since figured things out. It takes expertise, observers intuit, to realize that you used to lack it—and confidence in your new position to say it out loud.”
A Script For De-Escalating Sibling Conflict And Building Empathy
New York Times - 12/16/20
“Emotional Resilience Can Be Deliberately Cultivated”
New York Times - 6/15/20
To Reduce Anxiety, Try Temporal Distancing
Character Lab - 4/12/20
How Mental Models Can Help You Stay Calm In Charged Situations
Farnam Street - 3/1/20
Egocentric Bias: “Why We’re Blind To Our Power Over Others”
NPR - 2/24/20

“Think about the last time you asked someone for something. Maybe you were nervous or worried about what the person would think of you. Chances are that you didn't stop to think about the pressure you exerted on that person. Psychologists say we are often consumed with our own perspective, and fail to see the signs that others are uncomfortable, anxious or afraid.”
On Harnessing Curiosity… To Avoid Wasting Time, Because Curiosity
Character Lab - 2/23/20

“Curiosity is not influenced by long-term learning goals. That’s why, even though I’m a psychologist who loves his work, I still might be bored at a talk on psychology. But Internet content that promises quick and easy information draws my attention even if, after the fact, it doesn’t seem worth my time.”
Be Yourself - It May Make You More Successful
Harvard Business Review - 2/20/20
A List Of Things To Say “No” To For A Happier Life
Medium - 2/19/20
Fostering Teachers’ Curiosity Fosters Kids’ Curiosity
KQED - 2/2/20
How Gratitude Leads To Better Cooperation
Behavioral Scientist - 2/2/20
“How To Sing In Tune”
New York Times - 1/21/20
Duckworth: How Attention Is Related To Self Control
Character Lab - 1/19/20

“Try taking charge of your attention. Avert your gaze from whatever tempts you. Focus instead on whatever makes achieving your goals easier. Your future self will thank you for it.”
“Why Small Habits Make A Big Difference” (cf. Compound Interest)
Farnam Street - 1/12/20
Four New Books On Kindness
New York Times - 1/8/20
5 Simple Ways To Care For Yourself (By A Buddhist Teacher)
New York Times - 12/10/19
On The New Mr. Rogers Movie, And Openness To Kindness
BuzzFeed - 11/23/19
To Succeed: Choose Purpose, Not Passion.
Inc. - 11/18/19

“For most of us, hard work makes us passionate for a field rather than the other way around. We develop passion for what we do over time, rather than starting out with a clear, defined passion for a particular career path… A well-rooted sense of purpose, in other words, gives you way more grit than passion alone ever could. And that grit is what is likely to make you successful over the long haul.”
Business Analysis Focuses On Three Traits For Business Success
Business Insider - 11/15/19
IQ, EQ… AQ? Adaptability Quotient As The Key To Work Success
BBC - 11/6/19
A Brief History Of Happiness
Aeon - 10/31/19
Willingham On Curiosity: Why We Get Distracted
New York Times - 10/18/19
A Collection Of Reflections On Empathy
KQED - 10/10/19
Understanding Joy: How It Works, How To Foster It
New York Times - 9/28/19
“How To Disagree Better” - 3 Tips For Constructive Debate [Video]
New York Times - 9/18/19
“Why Children Become Bullies At School”
BBC - 9/16/19
Asking Students To Give Advice Might Improve Their Own Work
Character Lab - 9/15/19
Understanding Mastery Through The Lens Of Great Artists
Inside Higher Ed - 9/4/19
How One School Assesses Character And SEL
Hechinger Report - 9/3/19

“Capital City educators said they take steps to ensure that their process is fair and geared toward helping students improve. Students are measured on traits like reflection and accountability in the context of their academic work, school officials said. A research-heavy science project that involves numerous revisions and multiple draft deadlines, for example, provides an opportunity for a student to demonstrate organization and punctuality skills.”
“What Makes People Charismatic, And How You Can Be, Too”
New York Times - 8/15/19
“How To Combat Procrastination Based On Your Personality Type”
Fast Company - 8/8/19
Large Study Reaffirming Growth Mindset’s Effect On Performance
EdSurge - 8/7/19
A Strategy For Shaking Negative Thoughts
Inc. - 8/7/19
“In Praise Of The Incurably Curious Leader”
MIT Sloan Management Review - 7/18/19
Debunking The Bystander Effect: People Do Intervene When Others Are In Trouble
CityLab - 7/11/19
"Kindness Vs. Cruelty: Helping Kids Hear The Better Angels Of Their Nature”
NPR - 7/5/19
To Boredom, Isolation, And Quiet — Via Blaise Pascal
Quartz - 6/19/19
Reflections On Building Confidence
EdSurge - 6/10/19
Be Right More Often By Seeking Inform To Challenge Your Own Beliefs
Business Insider - 6/6/19
Having A Purpose Helps Your Health
KQED - 5/25/19
In Praise Of Admiration: Offering It Generously, And Criticizing Less
Fast Company - 5/15/19
"When Character Is Center Stage, Teens Rise Up”
ASCD - 5/9/19

“A compelling curriculum that puts character at the core promotes equity, empowers students through active learning protocols, and studies character through real-world and literary examples. Such curriculum creates opportunities to connect texts to local issues, takes students out into the community, and builds students' capacity to give back to their community.”
On Using Mantras In The Modern World
Quartz - 5/8/19

““Right now it’s like this,” works as a mantra… It doesn’t solve any practical problems. But it does get you into the right mental state to contemplate your situation calmly. It helps make you responsive, not reactive.”
Three Strategies For Building Resilience
Fast Company - 4/24/19
Worse Than The Absence Of Empathy Might Be Selective Empathy
KQED - 4/15/19
Instead Of Having A Goal, Have A Hypothesis
MIT Sloan Management Review - 4/1/19

“Hypotheses force individuals to articulate in advance why they believe a given course of action will succeed. A failure then exposes an incorrect hypothesis — which can more reliably convert into… learning.”
Nicholas Christakis On The Optimism Embedded In Collaboration
New York Times - 3/19/19

“His reasoning, oversimplified, is this: Complex societies are possible and durable only when people are emotionally invested in, and help, one another; we’d be living in smaller units and more solitary fashions if we weren’t equipped for such collaboration; and human thriving within these societies guarantees future generations suited to them.”
On Self-Sufficiency: “How Not To Be A Snowplow Parent”
New York Times - 3/19/19
A Surprisingly Meditative Interview With Dan Smith, Famous NYC Guitar Teacher
Gothamist - 3/13/19

"The first thing you will learn when meeting Dan Smith is that while he definitely has a sense of humor about his public persona, he is very sincere and very serious about what he does—especially about how learning to play guitar can teach you how to live.”
“How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger"
NPR - 3/13/19
Duckworth Reflects On And Contextualizes Grit
Hechinger Report - 3/11/19
Know What You Don’t Know, And Share It
Character Lab - 3/10/19
Reflections On Being Kind
Austin Kleon - 3/9/19
Active Vs. Passive Mindsets: Internal And External Locus Of Control
Farnam Street - 3/1/19
Kindness Can Be Contagious, Just Like Anger Is
KQED - 2/26/19

“Christakis and his colleagues mapped out the face-to-face interactions of about 5,000 people living in one town over the course of 32 years. Their emotional ups and downs were documented with periodic surveys. "We were able to show that as one person became happy or sad, it rippled through the network," Christakis says.”
On The Importance Of Hope
Enid News - 2/13/19

"Hope scores are significant predictors of average daily attainment and GPA," Hellman said. "Hope is a better predictor of first-year college performance than the SAT, ACT or high school GPA.”
"Why Girls Beat Boys at School and Lose to Them at the Office”
New York Times - 2/7/19

“From elementary school through college, girls are more disciplinedabout their schoolwork than boys; they study harder and get better grades. Girls consistently outperform boys academically. And yet, men nonetheless hold a staggering 95 percent of the top positions in the largest public companies. What if those same habits that propel girls to the top of their class — their hyper-conscientiousness about schoolwork — also hold them back in the work force?”
On Turning Regret Into Improvement
New York Times - 2/7/19
Economists Are Really Interested In Happiness These Days
Literary Hub - 1/26/19
Six Traits That Lead To Success (Assuming Wealth = Success…)
Business Insider - 1/21/19
Aspiration Vs. Ambition, And How We Make Decisions
New Yorker - 1/21/19
Goals: Duckworth On Making Your New Year’s Resolutions A Reality
Character Lab - 1/13/19
Cal Newport: “How to Actually, Truly Focus on What You’re Doing”
New York Times - 1/13/19
On Happiness: “The Joy Of Being A Woman In her 70s”
New York Times - 1/12/19

"We may not have control, but we have choices. With intention and focused attention, we can always find a forward path. We discover what we are looking for. If we look for evidence of love in the universe, we will find it. If we seek beauty, it will spill into our lives any moment we wish. If we search for events to appreciate, we discover them to be abundant.”
4 Ways Emotional Intelligence Can Help People Embrace Change
Harvard Business Review - 12/31/18
“Hopepunk”: Weaponized Optimism In Media Against Dark Times
Vox - 12/27/18

“Hopepunk says that kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness.”
“Honesty Shops” — Can You Teach Students To Be Honest?
NPR - 12/25/18

“Schools have, for some years, been experimenting with honesty shops in a part of India where theft was so commonplace in the past that the people who lived in this community were called kallars — a Tamil word that means “thief."
More On The Power Of Gratitude Journals
NPR - 12/24/18
“How To Be More Resilient”
New York Times - 12/15/18

"Another growth factor, BDNF, promotes neurogenesis in animals and may enhance resilience in humans. The good news is that we have some control over our own brain BDNF levels: Getting more physical exercise and social support, for example, has been shown to increase BDNF.”
Consistency And Productivity: Lessons On Succeeding Later In Life
TED - 12/11/18

"Successful people engage in project after project after project. They don’t just count their winnings; they buy more lottery tickets. They keep producing.”
On Managing And Fostering Empathy
New York Times - 12/10/18
There Are No Keystone Habits, Only Self-Awareness
Medium - 12/5/18
Exploring Paradoxes As A Tool For Prompting Empathy
ASCD - 12/1/18
8 Practices For Increasing Resilience
Fatherly - 11/26/18
On Teaching Emotional Literacy To Young Boys
Washington Post - 11/20/18
8 Conversation Tips From Terry Gross
New York Times - 11/17/18
There Are No Shortcuts: Facebook, Technology And Character
New York Times - 11/16/18

“Tweeting and trolling are easy. Mastering the arts of conversation and measured debate is hard. Texting is easy. Writing a proper letter is hard. Looking stuff up on Google is easy. Knowing what to search for in the first place is hard. Having a thousand friends on Facebook is easy. Maintaining six or seven close adult friendships over the space of many years is hard. Swiping right on Tinder is easy. Finding love — and staying in it — is hard.”
On Dance, Music, And Building Community Through “Collective Effervescence”
Aeon - 11/15/18

“The French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) theorised that ‘collective effervescence’ – moments in which people come together in some form of unifying, excitement-inducing activity – is at the root of what holds groups together. More recently, Bronwyn Tarr, an evolutionary biologist and psychologist at the University of Oxford who is also a dancer, has researched the evolutionary and neurological underpinnings of our innate tendency to bust a move.”
How Chattiness Can Help Students Succeed
Hechinger Report - 11/12/18
11 Short Essays About Learning From Failure
Middlebury - 11/7/18
On The Rise — And Dangers — Of Perfectionism
Atlantic - 11/5/18
Step-By-Step Guide To Being A More Patient Person
New York Times - 11/5/18
What Works In Preventing And Responding To Bullying
Hechinger Report - 10/29/18
"There Is Nothing Virtuous About Finding Common Ground”
Time - 10/25/18
A Model For Teaching Resilience (Via Community Colleges)
Achieving the Dream - 10/16/18
On The Value Of Idleness: A Summary Of Three Books
Public Books - 10/10/18

“Lightman ends with concrete, practical prescriptions: 10-minute silences during school days, “introspective” college courses that give students more time to reflect, electronics-free rooms at work, unplugged hours at home.”
Playbooks For Teaching Curiosity, Grit, Gratitude And Self-Control
Character Lab - 10/10/18
Is "Find Your Passion” A Fixed Mindset For Careers?
Scientific American - 10/9/18
A Framework For Managing When Things Are Overwhelming
Shawn Blanc - 10/5/18
Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius On Living Without Fear
Medium - 10/5/18
“The Confidence Gap… 5 Tips For Parents Of Tween And Teen Girls”
New York Times - 10/1/18
TED Talk: How To Disagree Productively And Find Common Ground
TED - 10/1/18
An Excellent Conversation With Angela Duckworth About Character
ASCD - 10/1/18
Nine Practices For Fostering Empathy
ASCD - 10/1/18
When To Quit. (Or: When Grit And Persistence Aren’t Right)
Harvard Business Review - 9/28/18
On The Double Edge Of Goals
Medium - 9/28/18

“Goals. Are. Awesome… But your goal shouldn’t be the thing that’s pulling you forward… What’s pulling you forward should be your recognition that what you’re trying to attain is worth it. Motivation should be a side effect of that.”
On Curiosity: More Follow Up Questions = More Second Dates
New York Times - 9/23/18
“How To Help Teenagers Embrace Stress”
New York Times - 9/19/18

“Happily, studies also find that it’s not hard to convert people to the stress-is-enhancing perspective. To do this in my own work with adolescents, I liken the demands of school to a strength-training program.”
Is The Apparent Surge In Anxiety More A Cultural Panic Than Truth?
New York Times - 9/7/18
Dungeons & Dragons: A (Literal) Character Builder
KQED - 9/4/18

"D&D gives us a powerful tool to explore new realities and how those realities are built: through action, choices, community, negotiation, resilience and responsibility… It’s not a novelty that stories change the world, but by exercising all those characteristics in a game, it becomes an obvious lesson: If you want to make any change, change the narrative first. Changing your own narrative as a character affects not only you, but your group. Group narratives affect community narratives and it all becomes an empowering cycle.”
6 Reasons We Struggle With Discipline, And How To Get It Right
ASCD - 9/1/18
"Talking About Failure… Here’s How To Do It Right”
New York Times - 8/17/18
“The Science Of What Makes People Care” - Five Principles
Stanford Social Innovation Review - 8/16/18

"Effective communication is not simply about getting your message out. It requires you to strategically tap into what shapes people’s feelings and values. Here we share five principles pulled from social science that will help you connect your work to what people care most about.”
“5 Thoughts On Self-Help"
Austin Kleon - 8/15/18
"If You're Not Outside Your Comfort Zone, You’re Not Learning”
Inc. - 8/14/18

“The goal should be to inject unpredictability into your life to keep your brain learning. Stability can be restful, but science shows it will teach you pretty much nothing.”
A Deck Of Cards With Phrases To Encourage Resilience
Swissmiss - 8/14/18
Exploring Both Sides Of Whether We Should Follow Our Passions
Medium - 8/3/18
"The Case For Puns As The Most Elevated Display Of Wit”
Quartz - 8/1/18
Thoughtfully Challenging (Or Contextualizing) Grit And Growth Mindsets
AMLE - 8/1/18
Is The Power To Make Plans The Key To Feelings Of Autonomy And Freedom?
Stanford - 7/31/18
7 Concrete Actions To Reduce Anxiety
Inc. - 7/31/18
Managing Symptoms And Sources Of Anxiety When Public Speaking
Stanford - 7/30/18
Brooks: Consistency In Relationships Is What Breaks Isolation And Disenfranchisement
New York Times - 7/26/18

“It tracks every time a volunteer has a touchpoint with one of the students — driving to school, sharing a meal. Hemminger calls it the Fitbit of social relationships. Tapestry can track how often a student has touchpoints, who hasn’t had a touchpoint, how many touchpoints lead to what outcomes.”
“The Overselling Of Gratitude”
Alfie Kohn - 7/11/18
"The Power Of Positive People” How A Friend Group Makes A Difference
New York Times - 7/10/18

“Researchers have found that certain health behaviors appear to be contagious and that our social networks — in person and online — can influence obesity, anxiety and overall happiness. A recent report found that a person’s exercise routine was strongly influenced by his or her social network.”
“Remembering Career Failures” — From An Education Professor
Larry Cuban - 7/5/18
How Many Choices Do We Want? It Depends, Interestingly.
Harvard Business Review - 6/27/18

“Consumers motivated by pleasure believe that what pleases them differs greatly from what pleases most other people. They will therefore prefer a large assortment. But when seeking to meet a utilitarian need with the same product, they are less inclined to see their preferences as being greatly different from those of other people. They will then be satisfied by a smaller assortment from which to choose.”
Is Curiosity The Biggest Character Driver Of Success?
KQED - 6/27/18

“A study of 6,200 children… found that elevated curiosity was linked to higher math and literacy skills among kindergarteners. That effect remained strong even when researchers compared kids with similar levels of “effortful control,” or the ability to concentrate and pay attention. Even more surprising, she discovered that students from impoverished backgrounds with a strong thirst for knowledge performed as well as those from affluent homes. ‘At high levels [of curiosity], the achievement gap associated with poverty was essentially closed,’ Shah says.”
Carol Dweck Responds: How Much Do Growth Mindset Interventions Help?
The Conversation - 6/26/18
“Some Thoughts on Pedagogy and the Problem of “Empathy””
The Tattooed Professor - 6/25/18
What Makes You Happy? An Analysis of 100,000 Responses.
Flowing Data - 6/21/18
Are Trolley Problems Not Really Useful? What If They Were Real…?
Slate - 6/18/18

“Bostyn wonders if people who are presented with standard trolley hypotheticals give biased answers because they’re worried about their reputations. They might think that if they told the experimenter they’d flip the switch or push the stranger off the bridge, it would make them seem cold and calculating. To avoid that outcome, they tilt their responses in the opposite direction. But when they’re confronted with a real-life version of the same dilemma, and one with real-life stakes, they might ignore that social anxiety and enact their truer, more utilitarian moral judgment.”
Don't Find Your Passion, Develop It
Stanford - 6/18/18
You've Heard About That Mr. Rogers Documentary. Watch The Trailer.
New York Times - 6/6/18
Is The Marshmallow Test All Fluff? Is It Really About SES, Not Willpower?
Atlantic - 6/1/18

“Ultimately, the new study finds limited support for the idea that being able to delay gratification leads to better outcomes. Instead, it suggests that the capacity to hold out for a second marshmallow is shaped in large part by a child’s social and economic background.”
Meta-Analysis Finds Limited Gains From Growth Mindset Interventions
EdSurge - 5/29/18
7 Strategies To Nurture Self-Driven Kids (Via Parenting)
Washington Post - 5/22/18
“Watching An Expert Do Something Makes You Think You Can, Too.”
Harvard Business Review - 5/21/18
Characteristics Of Moral Heroes
New York Times - 5/21/18
“The Cynical Genius Illusion: ..Debunking Lay Beliefs About Cynicism And Competence”
Personality and Psychology Bulletin - 5/20/18

“Cross-cultural analyses showed that competent individuals held contingent attitudes and endorsed cynicism only if it was warranted in a given sociocultural environment. Less competent individuals embraced cynicism unconditionally, suggesting that—at low levels of competence—holding a cynical worldview might represent an adaptive default strategy to avoid the potential costs of falling prey to others’ cunning.”
Stress Heightens Our Sensitivity To Bad News
Aeon - 5/15/18
On Why You Can’t Find A Location For Happiness In The Brain
Nautilus - 5/3/18
8 Tips For Developing Empathy
IdeoU - 4/14/18
Three More Ways To Build Empathy
ASCD - 4/12/18
Character Lab Releases Resources On Expert Practice
Character Lab - 4/6/18
Rethinking The Benefits Of Grit, Exploring The Costs
Creativity Post - 4/3/18
The Relationship Between Wealth & Happiness, Visualized By Nation
Visual Capitalist - 3/29/18
Understanding Wisdom: Factors, Descriptors, And A Test
TED - 3/27/18
“Laziness Does Not Exist”
Medium - 3/23/18

“For decades, psychological research has been able to explain procrastination as a functioning problem, not a consequence of laziness. When a person fails to begin a project that they care about, it’s typically due to either a) anxiety about their attempts not being “good enough” or b) confusion about what the first steps of the task are. Not laziness. In fact, procrastination is more likely when the task is meaningful and the individual cares about doing it well."
Garry Shandling And The Balance Between Ego And Self Criticism
New York Times - 3/20/18
Resistance Is Futile. Don’t Resist Bad Habits, Replace Them.
New York Times - 3/19/18
Teach Grit Through Gratitude, Not Willpower
Chronicle of Higher Education - 3/18/18
University Changes More Than Academics, It Changes Character
Pacific Standard - 3/13/18

“That's the takeaway from new Australian research, which finds a university education has a positive impact on two key personality traits—extroversion and agreeableness.”
How To Teach Children To Be Kind
Huffington Post - 3/9/18

"Both research and real-life examples show us that if kindness and empathy are modeled to kids in everyday life they are much more likely to continue this attitude into middle school and beyond. Modeling empathy starts early. Research indicates that if parents use more descriptive language in explaining how other people might be feeling, even toddlers are more likely to learn perspective-taking.”
Researcher Identifies Factors That Lead To Happy Settings
Wharton - 3/2/18

“My central argument when it comes to happiness is that if you try to get happier, it’s a recipe for neurosis. That usually doesn’t work. But you can set up your environment so you’re more likely to be happy.”
Designing A School Around Empathy
ASCD - 3/1/18
“Slow Thought: A Manifesto”
Aeon - 2/27/18
Deconstructing Why People Say “I Can’t”
Rob Jones Journey - 2/26/18
On The Difference Between Fault And Responsibility (By Will Smith)
YouTube - 1/31/18
A Game Theory Explanation For The Value Of Patience
Big Think - 1/28/18
An Early Study About The Effect Of A Positive Stress Mindset
PsyArxiv - 1/25/18
Having A Positive Attitude Towards A Subject Increases Performance
Stanford - 1/24/18
The Power Of An Apology
Indisputably - 1/16/18
Further Challenges To The Notion Of Willpower
Vox - 1/15/18
Six Tips For Reducing Stress
Forbes - 1/15/18
Understanding Introspection and Self-Awareness
Harvard Business Review - 1/4/18
Sherry Turkle: “The Assault On Empathy”
Behavioral Scientist - 1/1/18

"There it was in black and white, the thing that has been unfolding for decades: The robot presented as empathy machine—an object that presents itself as worthy of your empathic response, and as having an empathic reaction to you. But objects can’t do this.”
Finding A Purpose Leads To The Good Life, Even Medically Speaking
New York Times - 1/1/18
How To Make Self-Control Strength-Based, Not Deficit-Oriented
New York Times - 12/29/17
Persistence: The Most Rejected Books That Were Eventually Published
Literary Hub - 12/22/17

"In the end, I received 60 rejections for The Help. But letter number 61 was the one that accepted me. After my five years of writing and three and a half years of rejection, an agent named Susan Ramer took pity on me. What if I had given up at 15? Or 40? Or even 60?”
Concrete Tips For How To Validate Others In Conversation
Cult of Pedagogy - 12/18/17
On The Importance Of Emotional Diversity In Boys
Scientific American - 12/12/17
On The Need For Sweet Boys And Fierce Girls
Time - 12/1/17

"Girls have always known they were allowed to feel anything — except anger. Now girls, led by women, are being told they can own righteous anger. Now they can feel what they want and be what they want. There’s no commensurate lesson for boys in our culture.”
Reflections On What Empathy Is, And Why It Is Important
Farnam Street - 12/1/17
“A Short Primer On Resilience”: Source, Importance, And Timing
Harvard Graduate School of Education - 11/22/17
On The Value And Risk Of Overconfidence
Medium - 11/22/17
Two Different Kinds Of Being Busy/Stressed, And How To Manage
Medium - 11/19/17

"I’ve come to realize there are two types of “busy.” My anxiety continues to mount unless I identify which I am experiencing and act accordingly. 1. Attention is constrained… 2. Time is Constrained”
Valuing Time Over Money Leads To Greater Happiness
Behavioral Scientist - 11/14/17

"People who report frequent feelings of time scarcity are less happy and more prone to anxiety and depression than people who report feeling time affluent.”
Further Evidence Of The Effect Of Growth Mindsets
Brookings - 11/9/17
On Hurrying to Slow Down
Austin Kleon - 11/8/17

"“Hurry slowly” has its roots in an old Latin phrase: “Festina Lente,” or “Make haste slowly,” or “more haste, less speed.” (See: The Tortoise and The Hare.)”
How Gratitude Leads To Living And Aging Well
Vimeo - 11/4/17

“Optimistic people live almost eight years longer than the glass-half-empties do.”
Two Rules For Being Happy: Inner Locus Of Control, Sources Of Joy
Medium - 10/24/17
WOOP: Duckworth’s Character Lab Offers Formula For Grit
Character Lab - 10/4/17
On The Benefits Of Flawed Character (Via Dungeons and Dragons)
Rock, Paper, Shotgun - 10/3/17

"The idea of deliberately being “bad” at a game feels so entirely wrong to me. Decades of playing to win, of striving to improve and be better until victory, have taught me that deliberately failing a quest is lunacy… But if I’ve learned anything from D&D, it’s that winning isn’t the goal – it’s about the journey, and being as interesting within it as you can.”
Resilience: To Overcome Failure, Feel It More
Mic - 9/26/17

"Feeling bad might actually be a good thing if you’re using it to persevere in the future.”
On Emotional Intelligence, Via Uber’s New CEO
Inc. - 9/23/17
In Praise Of Consistency
Medium - 9/23/17
Surprise! 40 Years Later, Kids Are Better At Delaying Gratification
Washington Post - 9/22/17

"Researchers have been administering the [marshmallow] test to groups of kids for over 50 years now, which leads to a natural question: Have kids' abilities to delay gratification gotten better or worse over the years? …he gathered and analyzed the results of over 30 published marshmallow test trials administered between 1968 and 2017.”
Questioning Grit And Growth Mindset On Equity Grounds
Radical Scholarship - 9/21/17

"I also remain skeptical of growth mindset and grit because they are very difficult to disentangle from deficit perspectives of students and from monolithic, thus reductive, views of identifiable groups by race, class, gender, or educational outcomes.”
A Failure Resume: Elon Musk Makes A SpaceX Blooper Reel
Fast Company - 9/14/17

"Long road to reusability of Falcon 9 primary boost stage”
IQ vs EQ Face Off: When Is Each Most Important?
Inc. - 9/14/17
Three Ways To Foster Trust (Via Organizational Leadership)
Gallup - 9/14/17
Meaningful Living Comes Most From Making Small Decisions Well
New York Times - 9/4/17
Kids’ Books Have More Moral Impact When Characters Are Human
Guardian - 9/1/17
Self-Control Outdoes Intelligence As Predictor Of Success
SagePub - 9/1/17
Fun Or Supportive: Kids Are Strategic When In Time Of Need
Stanford - 8/30/17

"The researchers found that individuals were more particular about whom they included in their trust networks compared to groups related to fun and excitement. In those selective trust networks, freshmen were more likely to include highly empathic students.”
Ending Behavior Rewards Dramatically Improved Student Motivation
KQED - 8/29/17

"Not only did the children shrug when the rewards disappeared… they also welcomed the character-infused approach to learning. Teachers overheard students talking about being responsible and respectful. Kids who ordinarily kept quiet in class volunteered frequently, and more stepped up to help their classmates.”
The Case For Board Games As Conflict Management Training
Quartz - 8/28/17
CASEL: A Test For “Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning”
Hechinger Report - 8/23/17
Can Too Much Resilience Be A Bad Thing?
Harvard Business Review - 8/16/17

"Even adaptive competencies become maladaptive if taken to the extreme… For example, extreme resilience could drive people to become overly persistent with unattainable goals.”
Socio-Emotional Skills? Character? We Still Struggle To Define Them
NPR - 8/14/17
How To Improve Resilience
Harvard Center for the Developing Child - 8/6/17
Angela Duckworth’s Character Lab: Annual Report
Character Lab - 8/1/17
"The Case For Cursing”
New York Times - 7/27/17

"There’s emphatic swearing, for instance, which is meant to highlight a point, and dysphemistic swearing, which is meant to make a point provocatively. But swearing is beneficial beyond making your language more colorful. It can also offer catharsis. A study… found that swearing can increase your ability to withstand pain.”
You Can Reduce Stress By Talking To Yourself… In The 3rd Person
Michigan State University - 7/26/17
Making Mistakes Makes Learning More Effective
Hechinger Report - 7/26/17
Maybe “Giftedness” Doesn’t Really Exist. It’s Character.
Guardian - 7/25/17

"While the jury is out on giftedness being innate and other factors potentially making the difference, what is certain is that the behaviours associated with high levels of performance are replicable and most can be taught – even traits such as curiosity.”
7 Strategies For Improving Resilience In Midlife
New York Times - 7/25/17
“How To Be Better At Stress” <— A Full Guide
New York Times - 7/24/17
Is Curiosity A Better Predictor Of Success Than Intellectual Giftedness?
Atlantic - 7/24/17

"Students with gifted curiosity outperformed their peers on a wide range of educational outcomes, including math and reading, SAT scores, and college attainment. According to ratings from teachers, the motivationally gifted students worked harder and learned more.”
Long, Detailed Read On The Science Of Stress
Aeon - 7/11/17
On The Relation Between “Transcendent Experiences” And Humility
New York Magazine - 6/30/17
These Schools Have Made Compassion An Intentional Part Of School
KQED - 6/30/17
Colleges Work To Destigmatize Failure
New York Times - 6/24/17

"A consortium of academics soon formed to share resources, and programs have quietly proliferated since then: the Success-Failure Project at Harvard, which features stories of rejection; the Princeton Perspective Project, encouraging conversation about setbacks and struggles; Penn Faces at the University of Pennsylvania, a play on the term used by students to describe those who have mastered the art of appearing happy even when struggling.”
On The Importance And Benefits Of Caring
KQED - 6/6/17
Understanding Lying: Why People Do It, How Skill At It Develops
National Geographic - 6/1/17

"What drives this increase in lying sophistication is the development of a child’s ability to put himself or herself in someone else’s shoes. Known as theory of mind, this is the facility we acquire for understanding the beliefs, intentions, and knowledge of others. Also fundamental to lying is the brain’s executive function: the abilities required for planning, attention, and self-control. The two-year-olds who lied in Lee’s experiments performed better on tests of theory of mind and executive function than those who didn’t.”
Happiness Comes From Recognizing What You Can Control
Aeon - 5/22/17

"Once you begin paying attention, the dichotomy of control has countless applications to everyday life, and all of them have to do with one crucial move: shifting your goals from external outcomes to internal achievements.”
Two Different Kinds Of Empathy: Is One Healthier Than The Other?
New York Magazine - 5/18/17
“To Raise Better Kids, Say No”
New York Times - 5/17/17

“When we always yield to our children’s wants, we rob them of the opportunity to find solutions by adapting what they already have. Kids who learn from denial realize at an early age that they won’t always have the perfect tool for every job. They might not know something, have something, or be something. But that’s not the end of pursuing goals — it’s the beginning of activating their resourcefulness to find another way.”
On The Value Of Focus And Unfocus
Harvard Business Review - 5/12/17
There's A “World Happiness Summit”
Outside - 5/4/17
On The Unique/Awkward American Trait: Smiling At People?
Atlantic - 5/3/17
When/How Complaining Can Be Constructive
New York Magazine - 5/1/17
“(It’s Great To) Suck At Something”
New York Times - 4/28/17

"I’m hooked on the pursuit of those moments, however elusive they may be. But it’s not the momentary high that has sustained me. In the process of trying to attain a few moments of bliss, I experience something else: patience and humility, definitely, but also freedom. Freedom to pursue the futile. And the freedom to suck without caring is revelatory.”
Against Mindsets, Passion, And Grit - Education Is Emotional
Long View On Education - 4/23/17

"If we understand the inherent structural inequalities that lurk below the surface of emotional labor, we might all hesitate before asking teachers and students to pledge their allegiance to passion and grit.”
11-Article Collection On What Happiness Is, What Brings It, Etc
Quartz - 4/18/17
What’s The Future Of That 79-Year Harvard Study On Happiness?
Washington Post - 4/17/17
In Praise Of Reading What You Hate
New York Times - 4/15/17

"Reading what you hate helps you refine what it is you value”
5 Ways To Become More Gritty
Medium - 4/14/17
Three Ways To Build Grit
99u - 4/13/17

“Find your calling… Practice smart… Think like an optimist”
Does Being Nice Actually Pay Off In The End?
New York Times - 4/7/17

"Enviable as the cool kids may have seemed, Dr. Prinstein’s studies show negative consequences.”
High School Stress And Anxiety, And How To Deal With It
New York Times - 4/5/17
Four Practices For Increasing Well-Being and Happiness
New York Times - 4/5/17
Venting Just Makes You Feel Worse
Inc. - 4/5/17
8 Strategies For Turning Negative Thinkers Into Positive Ones
New York Times - 4/3/17

"The research that Dr. Fredrickson and others have done demonstrates that the extent to which we can generate positive emotions from even everyday activities can determine who flourishes and who doesn’t. More than a sudden bonanza of good fortune, repeated brief moments of positive feelings can provide a buffer against stress and depression and foster both physical and mental health, their studies show.”
To Be Happy, Practice Giving The Benefit Of The Doubt
Fast Company - 4/3/17
To Make More Scientists, We Need To Make Failure More Common
Scientific American - 3/27/17
A Different Take On The Character Traits Needed To Succeed
Inc. - 3/16/17
Lessons About Stress From A 1972 Book About Tennis
New York Magazine - 3/13/17
Being Dishonest Once Makes Future Dishonesty Easier
Aeon - 3/7/17
On Teaching Empathy, And Its Difference From Sympathy
KQED - 2/8/17
10 Meter Jump: Brilliant Video Concept Art About Facing Fear (via Diving)
Vimeo - 2/4/17
We Need To Rethink Willpower. It May Be An Outmoded Concept.
Nautilus - 2/2/17

“Willpower may simply be a pre-scientific idea—one that was born from social attitudes and philosophical speculation rather than research, and enshrined before rigorous experimental evaluation of it became possible. The term has persisted into modern psychology because it has a strong intuitive hold on our imagination: Seeing willpower as a muscle-like force does seem to match up with some limited examples, such as resisting cravings, and the analogy is reinforced by social expectations stretching back to Victorian moralizing. But these ideas also have a pernicious effect, distracting us from more accurate ways of understanding human psychology and even detracting from our efforts toward meaningful self-control.”
Lessons From Three Books On Empathy
Dublin Review of Books - 1/9/17
Some Tips For Teaching A Growth Mindset
Guardian - 1/9/17
“Living With Purpose Yields A Longer Life And Higher Income”
New York Magazine - 1/4/17
Avoid Generosity Burnout: A Field Guide For Givers
Harvard Business Review - 1/1/17
Awe: How Vastness Makes Us More Spiritual, Generous, And Happy
Atlantic - 1/1/17
Does Empathy Help Or Hinder Morality? Two Psychologists Debate.
New York Times - 12/29/16
"13 Things You Should Give Up If You Want To Be Successful”
Medium - 12/26/16
Carol Dweck Chimes In On The Oversimplification Of Growth Mindsets
Atlantic - 12/16/16
Willpower: …Or Is Joy The Most Important Factor In Persistence?
Inc. - 12/15/16
“The Invention Of Empathy: Rilke, Rodin, & The Art Of Inseeing”
Brain Pickings - 12/14/16
De-Stress With Coloring Books: HS Library Adds Popular Coloring Center
School Library Journal - 12/14/16
The Practical, Political Appropriation Of Having Empathy
New York Times - 11/29/16
On Mindfulness: Sometimes It’s Good To Be Elsewhere
New York Times - 11/26/16
Understanding Regret
New York Times - 11/12/16
Reading Some Literature Fosters Empathy, But Not All Literature
Wall Street Journal - 11/11/16
Revisiting Pride: When It Is Bad, And When It Fuels Us (i.e. Mastery)
99u - 10/29/16
The Impossibility (And Dangers?) Of Perennial Happniess
Quartz - 10/12/16
Company Does Curiosity Assessment Of 3,000 Global Employees
Merck KGAA - 10/12/16
How Literary Fiction Teaches Us Empathy
Medium - 10/10/16
Duckworth: 3 Suggestions To Foster (Not Follow) Your Passion
New York Times - 10/5/16
"How To Raise Kinder, Less Entitled Kids”
Washington Post - 10/4/16
Cell Phone Use Correlates With Less Trust In Others
Pacific Standard - 10/4/16
Three Ways To Delay Gratification (To Be More Patient?)
Fast Company - 10/3/16
Address Stress By Adjusting Your Drama-To-Perspective Ratio
New York Magazine - 9/30/16
Concrete Steps To Reduce Stress In High School Students
New York Times - 9/29/16
Is Curiosity The Balm For Bias?
New York Magazine - 9/14/16
Empathy Is Part Of The Danish National Curriculum
Quartz - 8/22/16
US Secretary of Education Thinks US Schools Should Teach Empathy
NPR - 8/22/16
Theater As Tool For Teaching Empathy
KQED - 8/22/16
Growth Mindset As Key To Fostering Grit: 6 Tips
The Week - 8/16/16
Learn Self-Control, But Do It Through Play And Passion, Not Repression
Atlantic - 8/16/16
20 Ways To Build Resilience
Hey Sigmund - 8/12/16
Excerpts From Bruce Lee’s Notebook On Personal Character
Brain Pickings - 8/1/16
Growth Mindset Correlated With Success For Low Income Students
KQED - 7/26/16
On The Challenges Of Teaching Character In Standards-Based Curricula
Atlantic - 7/25/16
Google Pays Bonuses For Employees To Abandon Failing Projects
New York Times - 7/23/16
To Be Successful, Be Humble. Here’s A Test To Measure Your Pride.
Inc. - 7/22/16
Empathy Is At The Heart Of Good Teaching, Design
Track Changes - 7/20/16
A Nonprofit That Teaches Kids To Care
Harvard Magazine - 7/13/16
Daniel Willingham Goes Deep Into What We Know About Grit
American Federation Of Teachers - 7/1/16
Gratitude: Be Thankful For What Others Have Done, Not What You Have
Harvard Business Review - 6/29/16
Alfie Kohn Continues To Push Against The Failure Narrative
Alfie Kohn - 6/23/16
A Short Reflection On Teaching Curiosity
ASCD - 6/8/16
Grit: Skateboarder Tries And Fails A Jump… 2,000 Times. Finally Lands It.
YouTube - 6/7/16
Revisiting The Marshmallow Test Of Self-Control—New Insight
Priceonomics - 6/1/16
A Terrific Visualization (And Article) On 10,000 Hours Of Practice
NPR - 6/1/16
Duckworth Responds To More Questions About Grit
NPR - 5/25/16
More From Paul Tough On His New Book: “Helping Children Succeed”
NPR - 5/24/16
Why Students Cheat, And What Can Be Done About It
KQED - 5/16/16
More On The Prevalence Of Self-Affirmation
Journal Of Health Psychology - 5/9/16

“Engaging in spontaneous self-affirmation was related to greater happiness, hopefulness, optimism, subjective health, and personal health efficacy, and less anger and sadness.”
More On How Persistence Is About How We Cope With Failure
NPR - 5/6/16
Paul Ekman Creates Interactive Atlas Of Emotions
Paul Ekman - 5/6/16
Meme: “Ten Things That Require Zero Talent” (A No Excuses Pep Talk)
Swissmiss - 5/3/16
A Review Of Duckworth’s “Grit”: Learn From Failure
Atlantic - 5/1/16
TED Talks About Failure
TED - 5/1/16
Lessons Learned From Failed Startups
Autopsy - 5/1/16
Princeton Professor Posts CV of Failures
Guardian - 4/29/16
From Apollo 13: How A Problem-Solving Mindset Defuses Crises
MIT News - 4/28/16
Smart, But Not Happy? Here Are Four Ingredients For Happiness
Atlantic - 4/25/16
The Key To Happiness… Is Question What Happiness Is
Nautilus - 4/18/16
A Needed Essay On The Long History Of Inattention
Aeon - 4/1/16
Angela Duckworth NYT Op-Ed On High Stakes Character Testing
New York Times - 3/27/16
JK Rowling Posts Her Rejection Letters As Inspiration To Persist
Guardian - 3/25/16
Is “Grit” The New “Self-Esteem”? Are We Rushing Too Much?
NPR - 3/8/16
(How) Should We Assess Grit?
New York Times - 3/1/16
Can You Learn Character Online?
EdSurge - 2/16/16
Uh-oh: Maybe Grit Isn’t Such A Strong Success Indicator?
King’s College London - 2/11/16
4 Ways To Manage Stress
Guardian - 2/7/16
CEOs Want People Who Learn From Failure
Quartz - 2/4/16
Five Strategies For Developing Self-Control
Creativity Post - 2/1/16
Which Character Traits Correlate With Academic Success?
KQED - 2/1/16
The Exhaustion Of Empathy
Harvard Business Review - 2/1/16
15 Ways To Manage Stress
Business Insider - 1/23/16
4 Ways To Develop A Growth Mindset In Math
Harvard Graduate School of Education - 1/16/16
How To Teach Resilience: Competence, Failure, Meaning
Guardian - 1/12/16
To Succeed: Don’t Choose What You Enjoy, Choose What You Can Sustain
Quartz - 1/1/16
Business Schools Assign And Discuss Novels To Foster Empathy
Baffler - 12/10/15
Optimism Leads To Better Outcomes. Here’s How.
Edutopia - 12/9/15
On Letting Kids Fail
New York Magazine - 12/7/15
Where Confidence (And Lack Of It) Comes From
School of Life/YouTube - 12/2/15
Remembering What You Have Given Leads To More Giving
Medium - 11/24/15
4 Kinds Of Mistakes: Understanding Failure Better
KQED - 11/23/15
Four Kinds Of Mistakes
KQED - 11/23/15
Gratitude: It Makes You Happier
New York Times - 11/21/15
Clarifying Misconceptions About Growth Mindsets
KQED - 11/16/15
Group Music/Ukulele Lessons Apparently Raise Empathy
Pacific Standard - 11/12/15
Learn Self-Control By Revisiting Goals, Not Practicing Patience
Pacific Standard - 11/12/15
Ursula Le Guin On The Magic Of Human Conversation
Brain Pickings - 10/21/15
Stop Rescuing Kids. Let Them Fail. That’s When They Learn & Change
Quartz - 10/20/15
"How To Weave Growth Mindset Into School Culture”
KQED - 10/2/15

“When teachers and administrators say they want kids to have a growth mindset, the school environment has to back up that rhetoric. At Arroyo, the emphasis on growth mindset came alongside a shift to standards-based grading. Kids can see that mistakes along the way aren’t negatively affecting them and keep working to master the concepts.”
“Stop Adopting Other People’s Anxiety”
Dear Design Student - 9/23/15
Duckworth’s Character Lab Introduces Character Growth Cards
Character Lab - 9/18/15
Is Curiosity The Trait Of Future Leaders?
Harvard Business Review - 9/11/15
Maximize Ability By Testing In Unfamiliar Environments (via Red Bull)
Singularity Hub - 8/28/15
More Awe And Wonder —> Less Selfishness
BBC - 8/27/15
Growth Mindset Is Not A Silver Bullet
Salon - 8/16/15
The Value Of Failure Isn’t The Part About Getting It Wrong
KQED - 8/12/15
Should We Really Be Encouraging So Much Failure?
WBUR - 8/5/15
Gratitude & Love of Learning: The Sources of Well-Being
Scientific American - 8/2/15
Commercial Algorithms Get In The Business Of Assessing Character
New York Times - 7/26/15
Is Empathy A Choice?
New York Times - 7/12/15
Head Of Now-Huge AirBnB Shares Early Investor Rejection Emails
Medium - 7/12/15
How Do Children Reward Merit In Different Countries?
Pacific Standard - 7/1/15
Don't Call Kids “Smart” (And Other Notes On Growth Mindsets)
Atlantic - 6/30/15
Don't Follow Your Passions. Do What You’re Good At.
99u - 6/22/15
How 3- And 5-Year Olds Look At Fairness
Pacific Standard - 6/18/15
Success = Learning From Failure. (via Relief Pitching)
Medium - 6/18/15
Go For It. How Fear Of Failure Inhibits Learning. (via Kitesurfing)
Medium - 6/15/15
...And When Rules Are Replaced By Values
Medium - 6/10/15
“F^@kup Nights”: Publicly Gathering To Learn From Failure
Stanford Social Innovation Review - 6/1/15
Character/Non-Cognitive Skills/Mindsets—What Do We Call Them?
NPR - 5/28/15
The Rise of Anxiety On Campuses (And How Puppies Can Help)
New York Times - 5/27/15
Does Altruism Exist? Tom Stoppard Debates An Evolutionary Biologist
Guardian - 5/22/15
Experiencing Awe Leads To Humility And Concern For Others
Pacific Standard - 5/19/15
Tips For Building Resilience
Harvard Graduate School of Education - 5/18/15
Grit Isn’t Just For Academic Success. It’s For Daily Life.
New York Times - 5/15/15
Duckworth: We’re Not Ready To Build In-School Assessments Of Grit
KQED - 5/13/15
More On How Reading Promotes Empathy
Guardian - 5/13/15
Redefining Grit: From Persisting On Command, To At Will
KQED - 5/5/15
Further Questioning Of The Grit Narrative
EdWeek - 4/27/15
Brain Pickings Riffs On David Brooks
Brain Pickings - 4/21/15
Tom Ashbrook Interviews David Brooks: On Character [audio]
WBUR - 4/20/15
When Discipline Is Left To The (Elementary) Students…
Medium - 4/16/15
David Brooks: Six Moral Milestones That Lead To Good Character
New York Times - 4/11/15
Four Traits At The Heart of Emotional Intelligence
New York Times - 4/7/15
It's Thanksgiving: Here Are Some Benefits Of Practicing Gratitude
Psychology Today - 4/3/15
A Collection of Writing About Grit And Resilience
Edutopia - 4/2/15
Exploring The Research Around When And Why We Trust
New York Magazine - 4/1/15
Happiness Correlated With GPA, School Culture
Harvard Graduate School of Education - 3/26/15
Stanford Brings Character and Moral Education Back Into Curriculum
Fast Company - 3/26/15
Empathy Training: When Doctors Are Paid Based On Feelings
Atlantic - 3/15/15
Center for Curriculum Redesign Publishes Character Framework
Center for Curriculum Redesign - 3/3/15
Mindset Affects Motivation, Openness to Risk, Creativity, And More
Farnam Street - 3/2/15
Obituaries As Character Lessons
Boston Herald - 2/28/15
Happiness As Side Effect, Not Objective
KQED - 2/17/15
Anxiety As An Indicator Of Moral Life
Aeon - 2/12/15
Kristof on How To Build Empathy
New York Times - 1/29/15
A Story Of Persistence: On Selling A Cartoon To The New Yorker
NPR - 1/25/15
Some Pushback Against Grit. Is It Racist?
EdWeek - 1/24/15
Taking The “Vs” Out Of “Content vs Character”
Brookings - 1/13/15
The State Of The Conversation Around Character
New York Times - 1/10/15
What Saps Resilience, And Where It Comes From (Survey Results)
Harvard Business Review - 1/5/15
Carol Dweck on Mindsets, Proper Praise, Parenting, and Teaching
Scientific American - 1/1/15
Is Socio-Emotional Learning The Key To Better Education?
NPR - 12/31/14
How Accurate Is Data On Student Non-Cognitive Skills?
Brookings - 12/18/14
On The Difference Between Losing And Being Beaten
Farnam Street - 12/2/14
OECD Report On Teaching Character
OECD - 12/1/14
Is Resilience Determined By Genetics?
New York Times - 11/28/14
5 Ways Gratitude Makes Your Life Better
New York Magazine - 11/26/14
What Defines Character? And Does It Change With Age?
New York Magazine - 11/24/14
Embrace Failure... Or Transcend It?
Creativity Post - 11/17/14
Dostoevsky Found Meaning In Life Through Shared Love
Brain Pickings - 11/11/14

"All are tending to one and the same goal, at least all aspire to the same goal, from the wise man to the lowest murderer, but only by different ways. It is an old truth, but there is this new in it: I cannot go far astray. I saw the truth. I saw and know that men could be beautiful and happy, without losing the capacity to live upon the earth.”
A Long Meditation Against Productivity... and For Presence
Medium - 11/7/14
Character Education Has A Conference. See the Presentations Here
Center for Curriculum Redesign - 11/7/14
Is Age Itself Just Another Mindset?
New York Times - 10/26/14
Curiosity Stimulates The Reward System in the Brain
NPR - 10/24/14
Dominic Randolph And The State of Character Education
Brookings - 10/22/14
CraigsList Founder on Trust, Integrity, and Persistence
Brain Pickings - 10/21/14
40 Years Later, The Marshmallow Test Designer Writes a Book
Atlantic - 9/24/14
John Dewey on Curiosity and Mental Discipline
Brain Pickings - 9/19/14
The Marshmallow Self Control Test: Remixed for the Digital Age
KQED - 9/15/14
How To Assess Student Grit
Edutopia - 9/11/14
Sesame Street Promotes Grit and Growth Mindsets, Too.
YouTube/Sesame Street - 9/10/14
Thoughts on Wisdom in the Age of Information
Brain Pickings - 9/9/14
Seneca On Living Wide Rather Than Long
Brain Pickings - 9/1/14

“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today.”
IQ and EQ... and CQ: Curiosity Quotient
Harvard Business Review - 8/27/14
Is Empathy Overhyped? An Argument Against It--and Many For It
Boston Review - 8/26/14
Failing More Leads to Faster Future Learning
Fast Company - 8/24/14
Grit Is Not Associated with Creativity, but Openness to New Ideas Is
EdWeek - 8/19/14
Purpose as Motivator and Source of Grit
KQED - 8/18/14
Persist: Initially Rejected Ideas Are Often More Valuable Later
Fast Company - 8/9/14
Growth Mindset Efforts Drive Progress Online and Offline
EdSurge - 7/24/14
How to Practice Mindfulness or Meditation at Work
Creativity Post - 7/23/14
How To Raise Kids With a Focus On Empathy and Kindness
Washington Post - 7/18/14
Making Visual Art Increased Resilience in Retirees
Pacific Standard - 7/7/14
Achievement or Empathy? Kids Think the Former is More Important.
Atlantic - 6/25/14
On the Importance of Teaching Empathy to Boys
KQED - 6/25/14
Why Curiosity Is the Most Important Character Trait
New Statesman - 5/27/14
Fed Chief Janet Yellen Talks About Grit at NYU Graduation Speech
CNN - 5/21/14
Studies Show Mindfulness Counteracts Attention Deficits
New York Times - 5/12/14
Social-Emotional Learning: Teach the Teachers First
New York Times - 4/30/14
How to Beat Stress. What Makes Us Happy? [Infographic]
Happify - 4/26/14
Further Insight Into Teaching Moral Character to Kids
Dr Robert Brooks - 4/23/14
How to Promote Morality in Children
New York Times - 4/11/14
7 Habits of Highly Emotionally Intelligent People
Fast Company - 4/8/14
Does Being Gritty Mean Being Less Creative or Independent?
Overcoming Bias - 4/6/14
Two New Books On The Power of Failure
New York Times - 4/3/14
How to Create Joy in the Classroom and in School
Brilliant Blog - 3/31/14
What’s Better than Praise and Feedback? Asking Questions.
KQED - 3/28/14
Brain Pickings Reflects on Duckworth, Grit, and Paul Tough
Brain Pickings - 3/28/14
Socrates’ Reflections on Wisdom
Farnam Street - 3/28/14
Wisdom is Knowing What You Don’t Know
Farnam Street - 3/25/14
Friendster, Silicon Valley, and Embracing Failure
New York Magazine - 3/25/14
An 8-Minute Primer on Building Character
Tiffany Shlain/YouTube - 3/20/14
3 Questions About Promoting Grit
Berkeley - 3/20/14
How Do We Learn Empathy?
Farnam Street - 3/17/14
Grit: Just a Fad?
NPR - 3/17/14
Another Great Artist Champions Failure
Telegraph - 3/14/14
What is Wisdom? Can It Be Measured?
New York Times - 3/12/14
Grit: It’s Necessary for Teachers, Too
Brilliant Blog - 3/11/14
6 Questions to Help Get Over Fear of Failure
Fast Company - 3/10/14
Persist: 10 Rejection Letters Sent To Famous People
Mental Floss - 3/5/14
Cookie Monster, Marshmallows, Willpower, and Success
Farnam Street - 3/4/14
Not Just Oscar-Winners: Science Is Behind Gratitude, Too
Mother Jones - 3/3/14
Where did Angela Duckworth’s Work on Grit Come From?
Farnam Street - 2/25/14
Another Call to Let Students Fail
Bloomberg - 2/20/14
Chess, Critical Thinking, and Character (via Paul Tough)
Farnam Street - 2/19/14
A Reminder of What Persistence Looks Like
Farnam Street - 2/12/14
What Can Upworthy Teach Us About Fostering Curiosity?
Brilliant Blog - 2/7/14
Tiger Mom Pushback Begins Again
New Yorker - 2/4/14
Dweck’s Other Message: Presence is More Meaningful than Praise
Brain Pickings - 1/29/14
Return of the Tiger Mom: The 3 Drivers of Success
New York Times - 1/25/14
A Broader Look at Teaching Grit
Edutopia - 1/9/14
Five Ways to Teach Grit in the Classroom
Edutopia - 1/7/14
How to Promote Excellence Through Positive Framing
Harvard Business Review - 12/19/13
A Philosophical Argument for the Importance of Failure
New York Times - 12/15/13
Brené Brown On The Difference Between Sympathy and Empathy
YouTube - 12/10/13
Brene Brown On Empathy, An RSA Animation
YouTube - 12/10/13
A Good Framework Synthesizing Noncognitive Factors In Learning
UChicago - 9/1/13
Success = Mastery, Mistakes, Questions, Context, & Change
Farnam Street - 7/17/13
Harvard’s 75-Year Study on Happiness. Result: Happiness = Love.
Atlantic - 4/24/13
What Is The Role Of Competition In Raising Healthy Children?
New York Times - 10/8/12
"The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less”
Harvard Business Review - 8/8/12
Revisiting Dweck: Is Praise Ever Appropriate?
New York Magazine - 8/3/07
"The Psychology of Curiosity” A Literature Review
Psychological Bulletin - 7/1/94

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